It's perfectly valid to question the accuracy of browser market share statistics given the fact that it is often technologically advantageous or even necessary to misidentify.
An illustration to your point:
I go to NetLibrary, and a page informs me my browser is not supported, may I download some of the following:
Internet Explorer 5.5 and above Netscape 6.2 and above Mozilla 1.1 and above Firefox 1.0 and above Safari 1.0 and above Opera 7.0 and above
Hey, the morons at NetLibrary! I'm using Opera 8! Knock, knock...Somebody there?
The best part, I tell Opera to identify as Explorer, and in I go, with no other change.
I'm still wondering if these guys are beyond stupid or somebody pays them to make alternative browsers look bad.
Mitch, what you said is, even when absolutely true, utterly irrelevant to the Bittorrent situation. It looks like you are looking at it just like Ballmer et al, as a fight between propietary products.
Microsoft, on numerous occasions, has indicated that they have a(n) [ insert competitors product ] killer... with a cool code name and features that look very appealing.
Bittorrent is NOT a product, is protocol and an implementation. There are dozens of BT clients, all free. How do you cut their air supply?
I wonder how many people didn't consider switching over to Linux/?nix/OS X/etc. etc. because of the overly hyped features of Longhorn... which now are disappearing left and right.
I'd guess than none, but, for the sake of the argument let's suppose somebody did. BT is working now, do you think we're going to stop using it waiting for Avalanche? I am going to stop my Kubuntu download until MSFT delivers? BT has the first mover advantage, and MSFT is going to have to work very hard to overcome it. Even when Avalanche is bundled with Longhorn, it will take years to reach significant numbers. And it will be MSFT only.
How is supposed to affect me, or you, I cannot guess.
Well, it looks as if we understand different things by lock-in.
To your exemples:
I once sat in on a sales pitch from some embedded Linux company. They sent out 3 salesmen to meet us (at god knows what expense), and then they want to charge us some outrageous price for a support contract just because they once submitted a few patches to the kernel. We told them to bugger off.
Agreed they look like a bunch of clowns, but what was the lock-in part? I fail to see it. My fault, I'm sure.
I've also witnessed a few sales pitches from the makers of specialize network test equipment like Ixia and Smartbits. That stuff is also expensive as hell, but what are you going to do? There's no cheap alternative, and the hardware + software comes as a bundle. So what are you going to do? We ended up (reluctantly) buying some of it at the outrageous price.
As I understood the case, the guys sold some unique hardware, bundled their software, and shafted you with expensive service you had to take because the harware was, well, unique. Well, that was lock-in, but possible their product had no competition. This blessed state is posible in very small niches (not money enough to attract competition) or very recent inventions (no time for the development of competition yet, with emphasis on yet).
When a niche gets to be big enough and other people had time to notice it, competition develops and prices head to the bottom. All products and services tend to commoditize with time, even the most seemingly invulnerable. And, as open is generally cheaper then propietary, products tend to commoditize around open standards.
Did you notice how very few companies get to have TWO succesful products? Or change technologies? Compare with the many more that had their day, created and dominated their niche, and believed that they would reap monopoly rent for ever.
Your points are valid, but I was thinking on a slightly larger time frame.
Let's face it: lock in is just smart business. Ignore it at your peril. If you're not always fighting to keep the customers that you have, then you're going to have a lot more time & money to spend on the ones you don't. If you found a company based on some idealistic notion that lock-in is bad, then you are going to fail just like any other two-bit company with no business sense.
I think you're missing the point rather badly:
nobody disputes that locking your customers in is profitable for you, if you can get it.
The problem being, lock-in is:
a) Very difficult to achieve.
b) Almost impossible to maintain for long.
So it makes sense to have a strategy that doesn't depend on lock-in.
The few exceptions are invariably the result of historical accidents, once-on-a-time windows of opportunity and even then tend to erode rather quickly.
The reason belongs to Economy 101.
I have a feeling that you're using the lock-in concept in a different way than the rest of us. Care to explain?
And a last point: you raise some interesting questions, but the tone of your post kind of discourages constructive discussion. Maybe you think it makes you look knowledgeable, but it just the opposite.
I've been poking about on Google for some time, with little success, searching for any project to build an ebook from off-the-shelf parts.
I'm not in any way knowledgeable in electronics, so I'm not asking about a how-to for myself. I am wondering if anyone has tried it. An LCD screen, a circuit board, a Linux-based OS, a simple means of moving ebooks in and out of the device. It doesn't have to be very complex or expensive. Color isn't necessary. If a builder wanted to be cute, build an ebook into a bound book; the paper and leather would make a nice shock absorber if the unit were dropped.
I've been down the same path, and I also found nothing. Is amazing that such an obvious and useful idea hasn't not been implemented or at least tried. The reader could certainly have an under $100 price, and the maker should sell a LOT of them.
The only reason I can think of is pressure from the book publishers. Is my tin hat on?
If you think of a way to begin a grass roots petition drop me a line. Stranger things have happened.
It was common throughought ancient Europe for the citizens of Rome's provinces or client states to be subject to its laws and legal process - often above and beyond those of their own state or tribe.
I'm afraid you got it backwards.
In the Roman Empire, Roman citizens, even if born or/and living in a subject state, were granted a trial in Rome under Roman law. Most people jumped at the chance, because Roman law was codified, and for the times, was logical and advanced. You see, even now is the base of the legal system of most non anglo-saxon western countries.
It helped that Rome, in a very far-sighted policy, was very liberal in granting citizenship to foreign people, usually requiring some military service. This policy was instrumental in the amazing cohesion of the Roman Empire.
One of the most famous cases of the Roman trial was Saint Paul, who even when detained in Holy Land, demanded and got a trial in Rome before the Emperor. BTW, he lost the trial.
Envious of him for not having to "dress the part" to live his life. The tone of your post suggested that you had to dress up in order to feed your family, and you didn't really liked it.
But when most people think about what an "executive" is, running a company, or being high up in the managerial food chain in terms of running a company, that is what most people think of.
Congratulations, nice troll!
But just the same, most people are wrong, the original poster is right.
No country does or is expexted to respect other countries IP laws, but the US has put political pressure on other countries to make their own laws more like its own
Allow me to illustrate your point with an exemple.
I live in a a rather large South American country. During the 90's our President and our Economy Minister, who, despite being rather popular then, were widely considered to be USA and more specifically Wall Street sock puppets, tried to give us a new patent law.
See that I say NEW, because we had one for about a century, more or less based in European laws, and more or less respected. I mean, we were not Africa, with due respect to African countries.
The battle was about software and drugs. Oh, surprise!
What amazed the country was not that the president and the minister would lobby for the foreign point of view (that was par for the course for them), but the degree of pushing of the USA ambassador, then known as The Viceroy.
Mind you, we know the realities of life, and it was obvious that pressure was going to be applied, but the sheer brazeness was incredible. We are of European descent and tradition, so we supposed the dirty deeds would be done beside closed doors. No such luck! The spectacle of the USA ambassator behaving EXACTLY as Monkey Boy Ballmer, with a touch of lunacy that was like a prophecy of the future Scott McBride did more to destroy the USA image than years of leftist propaganda.
The end result? The tactic backfired, because our Congress, in normal times quite easily bribed, coudn't vote for the law without a killer backlash. They passed a middle of the road law, that satisfied nobody, and which nobody really complies with.
The USA ambassador is long gone, the president and the minister disgraced, in unofficial exile (not for this action, that was rather small in the scope of our politics), and now we have a semi-socialist government.
I'm sure there's a moral somewhere in this story. We just think the whole process stank.
Well, if you happen to be in South America, came home and I'll show you 4 (four) computers with Opera.
Now to the sad part. Opera is by far the best browser out there, bar none. But... yes, there a but: NOBODY is going to pay for a browser. Firefox and Konqueror are close enough, and came free (as in beer). For years I've been posting everytime Opera was being discused, stating the obvious: Opera should make their browser free, as in no ads, and gain marketshare. The money they could try to get from embedded, specialized, etc. If they can survive this way, fine. If not, bad luck, because the days someone could hope to CHARGE for a browser are long, long gone.
And this was from an Opera user, and opera fan. Imagine the rest.
Not in the spirit of controversy, but of clarifying:
The main thrust of the argument was the "Iraq"/"Irak" spelling. Same pronunciation, different spelling in different languages.
You didn't get it? How do Irak's people call their country? How do they spell it? No idea? Because they speak Arabic? With a different alphabet? A language with sounds that we cannot represent in the Roman alphabet? Yes, that's why your exemple doesn't apply. Last time I checked, the USA and Colombia both were using the Roman alphabet, so there's no excuse for not using the correct spelling, the one that Colombians use.
This is the case with Columbia in English and Spanish.
Dude, Webster is your friend. Ask him. I did.
Of course, you're free to spell as you like, but little things like this really rub people the wrong way. If you ever need something from a Colombian, spelling his country's name correctly would be a good first step.
Slashdot Mirror
It's perfectly valid to question the accuracy of browser market share statistics given the fact that it is often technologically advantageous or even necessary to misidentify.
An illustration to your point:
I go to NetLibrary, and a page informs me my browser is not supported, may I download some of the following:
Internet Explorer 5.5 and above
Netscape 6.2 and above
Mozilla 1.1 and above
Firefox 1.0 and above
Safari 1.0 and above
Opera 7.0 and above
Hey, the morons at NetLibrary! I'm using Opera 8! Knock, knock...Somebody there?
The best part, I tell Opera to identify as Explorer, and in I go, with no other change.
I'm still wondering if these guys are beyond stupid or somebody pays them to make alternative browsers look bad.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Mitch, what you said is, even when absolutely true, utterly irrelevant to the Bittorrent situation.
It looks like you are looking at it just like Ballmer et al, as a fight between propietary products.
Microsoft, on numerous occasions, has indicated that they have a(n) [ insert competitors product ] killer... with a cool code name and features that look very appealing.
Bittorrent is NOT a product, is protocol and an implementation. There are dozens of BT clients, all free. How do you cut their air supply?
I wonder how many people didn't consider switching over to Linux/?nix/OS X/etc. etc. because of the overly hyped features of Longhorn... which now are disappearing left and right.
I'd guess than none, but, for the sake of the argument let's suppose somebody did.
BT is working now, do you think we're going to stop using it waiting for Avalanche?
I am going to stop my Kubuntu download until MSFT delivers?
BT has the first mover advantage, and MSFT is going to have to work very hard to overcome it.
Even when Avalanche is bundled with Longhorn, it will take years to reach significant numbers. And it will be MSFT only.
How is supposed to affect me, or you, I cannot guess.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
I've posted before, so accept my virtual moderation:
+1 Well said!
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Disclaimer: strong language directed not to you, but to your post.
Try telling that to a corporate entity.... the blank statement would leave managers somewhat concerned.
Who the fuck cares about what a corporate entity likes?
Why should I (or anybody else) care about concerned managers?
Linux is free and Free, is a GIFT to them! They should be grateful.
Or is it that as soon a little money appeared in the horizon all of us turned whores?
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Thanks
Well, since it looks like we are just in the middle of The Mother of All Astroturf Campaigns, we'll have to wait a little to find out.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
I point thee to the wikipedia where it states the peak of the empire occured during the mid-19th century.
Point taken.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
The British Empire took centuries to fall. It didn't collapse in 20 years.
No, but it indeed did collapse in 40 years.
Aren't you thinking about the Roman Empire?
And some moron moderated your post to Insightful.
The horror... The horror...
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Great post! Sorry I'm out of moderating points.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
but I really doubt an graduate from Facultad de Ciencias Economicas - Universidad Nacional de Cordoba would read
Y por qué la duda?
Saludos,
Carlos (no graduado en la UNC)
Maybe a subtle hint to Sun
If that was subtle, I'd like to know what do you think is an unsubtle warning. Horse's head in the bed?
Of course the name was a warning. They're hitting Sun with the cluestick rather hard.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Oracle is by no means doing this philanthropically. They're doing it because Ellison despises Gates and Ballmer, and he's seen what Firefox has done.
And the problem with this is exactly what?
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Well, it looks as if we understand different things by lock-in.
To your exemples:
I once sat in on a sales pitch from some embedded Linux company. They sent out 3 salesmen to meet us (at god knows what expense), and then they want to charge us some outrageous price for a support contract just because they once submitted a few patches to the kernel. We told them to bugger off.
Agreed they look like a bunch of clowns, but what was the lock-in part? I fail to see it. My fault, I'm sure.
I've also witnessed a few sales pitches from the makers of specialize network test equipment like Ixia and Smartbits. That stuff is also expensive as hell, but what are you going to do? There's no cheap alternative, and the hardware + software comes as a bundle. So what are you going to do? We ended up (reluctantly) buying some of it at the outrageous price.
As I understood the case, the guys sold some unique hardware, bundled their software, and shafted you with expensive service you had to take because the harware was, well, unique.
Well, that was lock-in, but possible their product had no competition. This blessed state is posible in very small niches (not money enough to attract competition) or very recent inventions (no time for the development of competition yet, with emphasis on yet).
When a niche gets to be big enough and other people had time to notice it, competition develops and prices head to the bottom. All products and services tend to commoditize with time, even the most seemingly invulnerable. And, as open is generally cheaper then propietary, products tend to commoditize around open standards.
Did you notice how very few companies get to have TWO succesful products? Or change technologies? Compare with the many more that had their day, created and dominated their niche, and believed that they would reap monopoly rent for ever.
Your points are valid, but I was thinking on a slightly larger time frame.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Let's face it: lock in is just smart business. Ignore it at your peril. If you're not always fighting to keep the customers that you have, then you're going to have a lot more time & money to spend on the ones you don't. If you found a company based on some idealistic notion that lock-in is bad, then you are going to fail just like any other two-bit company with no business sense.
I think you're missing the point rather badly:
nobody disputes that locking your customers in is profitable for you, if you can get it.
The problem being, lock-in is:
a) Very difficult to achieve.
b) Almost impossible to maintain for long.
So it makes sense to have a strategy that doesn't depend on lock-in.
The few exceptions are invariably the result of historical accidents, once-on-a-time windows of opportunity and even then tend to erode rather quickly.
The reason belongs to Economy 101.
I have a feeling that you're using the lock-in concept in a different way than the rest of us. Care to explain?
And a last point: you raise some interesting questions, but the tone of your post kind of discourages constructive discussion.
Maybe you think it makes you look knowledgeable, but it just the opposite.
Or I have just been trolled?
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
This is yet another in a long line of non-economists saying stupid and ignorant things about development economics.
You're giving Schwartz too much credit.
It's just an asshole trying to scare Brasil from OSS.
Is going to work. Yeah, Schwrtzie, really. The laughs you're hearing? Maybe the Carnaval came early.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
I've been poking about on Google for some time, with little success, searching for any project to build an ebook from off-the-shelf parts.
I'm not in any way knowledgeable in electronics, so I'm not asking about a how-to for myself. I am wondering if anyone has tried it. An LCD screen, a circuit board, a Linux-based OS, a simple means of moving ebooks in and out of the device. It doesn't have to be very complex or expensive. Color isn't necessary. If a builder wanted to be cute, build an ebook into a bound book; the paper and leather would make a nice shock absorber if the unit were dropped.
I've been down the same path, and I also found nothing.
Is amazing that such an obvious and useful idea hasn't not been implemented or at least tried.
The reader could certainly have an under $100 price, and the maker should sell a LOT of them.
The only reason I can think of is pressure from the book publishers. Is my tin hat on?
If you think of a way to begin a grass roots petition drop me a line. Stranger things have happened.
Cheers,
It was common throughought ancient Europe for the citizens of Rome's provinces or client states to be subject to its laws and legal process - often above and beyond those of their own state or tribe.
I'm afraid you got it backwards.
In the Roman Empire, Roman citizens, even if born or/and living in a subject state, were granted a trial in Rome under Roman law. Most people jumped at the chance, because Roman law was codified, and for the times, was logical and advanced. You see, even now is the base of the legal system of most non anglo-saxon western countries.
It helped that Rome, in a very far-sighted policy, was very liberal in granting citizenship to foreign people, usually requiring some military service. This policy was instrumental in the amazing cohesion of the Roman Empire.
One of the most famous cases of the Roman trial was Saint Paul, who even when detained in Holy Land, demanded and got a trial in Rome before the Emperor. BTW, he lost the trial.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Envious of him for not having to "dress the part" to live his life.
The tone of your post suggested that you had to dress up in order to feed your family, and you didn't really liked it.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
I cut my hair and put on a suit to go feed my family, if he cares about free software he might consider doing the same,
A little envious, aren't we?
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
But when most people think about what an "executive" is, running a company, or being high up in the managerial food chain in terms of running a company, that is what most people think of.
Congratulations, nice troll!
But just the same, most people are wrong, the original poster is right.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Oops!
I meant Darl Mc Bride.
Talk about Freudian slips!
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
No country does or is expexted to respect other countries IP laws, but the US has put political pressure on other countries to make their own laws more like its own
Allow me to illustrate your point with an exemple.
I live in a a rather large South American country. During the 90's our President and our Economy Minister, who, despite being rather popular then, were widely considered to be USA and more specifically Wall Street sock puppets, tried to give us a new patent law.
See that I say NEW, because we had one for about a century, more or less based in European laws, and more or less respected. I mean, we were not Africa, with due respect to African countries.
The battle was about software and drugs. Oh, surprise!
What amazed the country was not that the president and the minister would lobby for the foreign point of view (that was par for the course for them), but the degree of pushing of the USA ambassador, then known as The Viceroy.
Mind you, we know the realities of life, and it was obvious that pressure was going to be applied, but the sheer brazeness was incredible. We are of European descent and tradition, so we supposed the dirty deeds would be done beside closed doors.
No such luck! The spectacle of the USA ambassator behaving EXACTLY as Monkey Boy Ballmer, with a touch of lunacy that was like a prophecy of the future Scott McBride did more to destroy the USA image than years of leftist propaganda.
The end result? The tactic backfired, because our Congress, in normal times quite easily bribed, coudn't vote for the law without a killer backlash. They passed a middle of the road law, that satisfied nobody, and which nobody really complies with.
The USA ambassador is long gone, the president and the minister disgraced, in unofficial exile (not for this action, that was rather small in the scope of our politics), and now we have a semi-socialist government.
I'm sure there's a moral somewhere in this story. We just think the whole process stank.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Well, if you happen to be in South America, came home and I'll show you 4 (four) computers with Opera.
Now to the sad part. Opera is by far the best browser out there, bar none. But... yes, there a but: NOBODY is going to pay for a browser. Firefox and Konqueror are close enough, and came free (as in beer). For years I've been posting everytime Opera was being discused, stating the obvious: Opera should make their browser free, as in no ads, and gain marketshare. The money they could try to get from embedded, specialized, etc. If they can survive this way, fine. If not, bad luck, because the days someone could hope to CHARGE for a browser are long, long gone.
And this was from an Opera user, and opera fan. Imagine the rest.
Cheers,
carlos cesar
Not in the spirit of controversy, but of clarifying:
The main thrust of the argument was the "Iraq"/"Irak" spelling. Same pronunciation, different spelling in different languages.
You didn't get it?
How do Irak's people call their country?
How do they spell it?
No idea?
Because they speak Arabic?
With a different alphabet?
A language with sounds that we cannot represent in the Roman alphabet?
Yes, that's why your exemple doesn't apply. Last time I checked, the USA and Colombia both were using the Roman alphabet, so there's no excuse for not using the correct spelling, the one that Colombians use.
This is the case with Columbia in English and Spanish.
Dude, Webster is your friend. Ask him. I did.
Of course, you're free to spell as you like, but little things like this really rub people the wrong way.
If you ever need something from a Colombian, spelling his country's name correctly would be a good first step.
Best wishes,
Carlos Cesar
But the three exemples you give are very different cases. None of them applies to the other two.
You seem to be a smart guy. Think a little about them.
Hint: we say "Estados Unidos", but also "Massachussets".
We say "Nueva York", but also "Minnesota", or "Oregon".
Iraq/Irak is even easier.
Cheers,
Carlos César